Mewtwo Strikes Back Review
Although I use the English name of the movie and its characters, I was watching the Japanese version subtitled rather than the English dub. Due to the notorious editing done by 4Kids, the dub is often vastly different from the original that I am reviewing, so keep that in mind.
Also, yes, I am overanalyzing it severely. That's part of the fun.
Thoughts and Synopsis
The first Pokémon movie concerns Mewtwo, the mysterious Pokémon found deep inside Cerulean Cave in the original Pokémon games with no explanation but mysterious Pokédex descriptions and some puzzling diary entries left in Cinnabar Island's Pokémon Mansion where Mew is said to have given birth to a new Pokémon.
A lot of the fandom has somehow deduced this means Mewtwo in the games is not a clone at all, but I maintain this is misleading. There is a lot of time missing between where Mew was discovered and where Mew 'gave birth' according to the diary entries, and Mewtwo's Pokédex entries make it clear from the very first games that it is the result of genetic engineering, so it is clearly not just a natural offspring of Mew. And contrary to popular belief in this fandom, in real life clones are generally planted into the uterus of a female to grow until birth - yes, birth. It is clear from the Pokédex entries that Mewtwo was manmade; we know that Mew did not simply give natural birth. While the original game canon never explicitly states that Mewtwo is a modified clone of Mew rather than engineered for something else and then simply planted inside Mew, later games' Pokédex entries do explicitly state it was created from Mew, and everything from the name to the fact they'd decided to plant it inside Mew and not some more easily obtainable female to begin with sure seems to imply Mew had something to do with it. It has also been suggested that the "birth" mentioned might even be metaphorical, simply meaning Mew's 'offspring' was born, in which case Mew would not need to actually have a uterus and thus can retain its genderless identity. Where game canon and anime canon differ is simply on whether the scientists ever had their hands on a live Mew that they planted the clone into or simply found fossilized remains that they extracted the DNA for the cloning from, with Mewtwo spending all of its fetal life in a test tube.
But I digress. In any case, the movie comes up with the latter scenario. From outside backstory (The Birth of Mewtwo), we know that Dr. Fuji had been experimenting with the creation of clones of his dead daughter, though the clones never lived very long. Mewtwo, on the other hand, being such a superpowered creature, does live, and at the beginning of the film he wakes up inside his tank, wondering about such philosophical questions as who he is and why he was born. After conversing telepathically with the scientists who created him and finding out that he is nothing but a human experiment, he destroys the lab in a fit of rage.
Having destroyed the lab, and not really knowing what to do with himself afterwards, a confused Mewtwo is then confronted by Giovanni of Team Rocket - who turns out to have been watching the whole thing - and tentatively agrees to his little speech about how Mewtwo needs to learn to control and restrain his powers so as not to destroy the world. Mewtwo is dressed in a strange-looking armor that has for some reason been inspiration for "Mewthree" creators ever since (seriously, how does that even make sense?) and proceeds to easily overpower all the Pokémon that are thrown at him, but is still rather confused about why he is doing this; when Giovanni tells him he basically exists for human use, he rebels, escapes and breaks off that silly armor. He goes back to the island, rebuilds the lab, and, determined to prove his life has some worth and meaning despite being manmade, plots to show the world - but mostly himself - that he is not only stronger than any human could hope to be, but also stronger than the original Mew.
This really is quite an interesting premise. Though Mewtwo is the antagonist and gets regretfully little development during the actual film, his character is really quite compelling. He wants to believe he's equal to other living creatures, but feels inferior because he's an experiment, a creation of humans rather than of God, if you will. Since the only thing he is confident in (really, the only thing he truly knows about himself) is his powers, he latches on to this concept of strength as a meaningful measure of his worth as a living creature; this is also reinforced by what Giovanni taught him in the time he spent with Team Rocket. To prove himself, he decides he must show he is stronger than the original he was created from, thus vindicating his own existence: if the clone is more powerful than the original, the clone has to be at least as deserving of life. With this deranged worldview, he creates more clones, partly so that he won't be alone in being a clone and partly so that they can also show themselves to be stronger than the originals and strengthen the idea of clones in general being superior.
But the movie unfortunately doesn't really focus on Mewtwo's quite interesting psyche, instead moving on to the, ahem, vital matter of setting things up so that Ash can save the day. Mewtwo kidnaps and brainwashes the local Nurse Joy to use as a servant and then invites some strong trainers over to his island before he conjures up a storm to make sure only the absolute best can make it through: he wants to prove himself better than even the strongest of humans, and thus he needs a test to filter out the weaklings. Ash, Misty and Brock are of course among the invited trainers and they head off to the island with the help of Team Rocket, who of course are all for helping the twerps all of a sudden. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that only a few trainers have braved the storm and gotten to the island. After some puzzled waiting, Mewtwo reveals himself to the shock of the trainers, who had (sensibly enough) assumed the "strongest Pokémon trainer" spoken of in their invitation was a human.
Mewtwo shows off his superior powers by psychically torturing the first trainer to vocally question him, smirking and chuckling as he tosses him aside (into a pool, of course; I mean, otherwise he'd get hurt!). Which sounds very cheesily eeeeevil at first glance, but Mewtwo is actually a character for which this makes perfect sense in context if we think about it from his point of view. This is essentially his first encounter with Pokémon trainers since his brief time with Team Rocket, and in the meantime he has grown a lot of self-confidence. When he was with Giovanni, he was lost and confused and just did what he was told; now that he is alone and under his own command, he finds with glee that even the supposedly strongest of the humans who created him, tried to control him and successfully control other Pokémon are really just pathetic little ragdolls: he can pick them up with his mind, make them squirm in pain with a lazy squeeze of his fingers, and throw them across the room with a mere flick of his hand. He has never felt as truly, intimately in control as now: mindwiping Joy was easy and she never had any claim to strength that she might have used to fight back, but this is one of only six Pokémon trainers who made it through his storm, and yet compared to Mewtwo, he is soft, weak, vulnerable: a pathetic non-threat. Mewtwo chuckles because he is for the first time truly feeling the magnitude of his own power over the humans standing before him, and it feels good.
Mewtwo proceeds to casually deflect the trainer's Gyarados's Hyper Beam and then releases Joy from his control, as she has fulfilled her purpose (serving as a human front to get the trainers there). He comments on how easy it is to control humans and then goes on to how he once tried to work with humans but was disappointed. Note how his mind has turned it from Giovanni trying to control him like a puppet into him trying to "work with" humans, and from his realizing he doesn't want to exist only for human use to his being disappointed in human weakness - how he retells it here is notably different from how it actually happened as we saw in the beginning. He refuses to admit he once let himself be subordinate to a human: instead he tells it like he was the dominant character in his dealings with humans from the beginning. He even then goes on to say that while humans are unworthy of ruling the world like they do, the Pokémon are not deserving either, because they have let the humans control them - he insults them for doing precisely what he did with Giovanni. Projection much?
Ash's Pikachu leaps forth to protest: they're not slaves but friends to the humans. Mewtwo throws it away in frustration and responds that any Pokémon that willingly submits to a human is weak - again, his worldview revolves around the concept of fighting strength. Another trainer attempts to have his Rhyhorn attack Mewtwo with the same pathetic results as before, prompting Mewtwo to declare that it's useless because he is the strongest Pokémon.
Now the movie gets odd. Ash says he doesn't think Mewtwo is unbeatable, and for some reason Mewtwo takes this as his cue to release the cloned Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise he's been keeping asleep in his cloning lab and essentially challenge the trainers to a Pokémon battle - he now wants to show off his ability at the humans' own game, perhaps just in an attempt to see himself as capable of ruling over Pokémon the way humans do now. Since, conveniently, three of the trainers have the final forms of the starters, they have three short one-on-one original versus clone battles, with the clones winning easily in each case, though Ash's Charizard puts up more of a fight than the other trainers' Venusaur and Blastoise who both pathetically go down in one hit.
Mewtwo now proceeds to summon three black Pokéballs that quickly capture all three of the originals, intending to clone even stronger versions. As much as I've been overanalyzing Mewtwo so far, I don't think I can very well make sense of this. It is obviously hypocritical, and it could be that the point is merely that Mewtwo has become just like the humans he so despises, but it is more difficult to realize precisely why he feels the need to have more Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise clones when the ones he already has have already been shown to be superior to the originals. Perhaps he has lost sight of his goals himself, instead having become insane and addicted to the feeling of power - perhaps hinted at by his repeated insistence that he creates his own rules. Either that or the movie has just moved on to being driven by the rule of drama.
Mewtwo calls forth more black Pokéballs that swarm into the room where all the other Pokémon are and capture them one by one. When Ash attempts to beat the balls by recalling Squirtle and Bulbasaur, the black balls simply capture their Pokéballs with them inside. Pikachu resists capture the longest, although eventually he too is absorbed by a black ball, which Ash then desperately follows down into the cloning chamber. He manages to wrench the Pokéball out of the cloning machine, but not until it has already gathered the DNA to create a clone. Oddly, the new clones that emerge from the machine do not have the special markings that set the Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise clones apart. Perhaps Mewtwo personally engineered them to be stronger while the machine only creates true identical clones. Or the animators just couldn't be bothered. In any case, Ash's struggle with the cloning machine results in all the originals being released from the black Pokéballs again.
Meanwhile, Mewtwo stands on the arena with his three starter clones, staring at the horrified trainers, who have fled back onto the battle arena, the only place they could go. He is silent for a moment and then tells them he has decided to spare their lives, opens the great doors leading back outside and tells them to leave - with the footnote that it is still storming, and how will they leave without their Pokémon? Mewtwo now wants to demonstrate to the humans just how helpless they are when they have no Pokémon to assist them - by having them drown in the very same storm they braved before.
Before he manages to enforce the order, however, Ash dramatically returns with all the Pokémon, both the originals and the new clones, and after declaring that he will protect his Pokémon no matter what, he runs straight towards Mewtwo and tries to punch him, which naturally doesn't work. By this point Mewtwo isn't chuckling - he is just annoyed, and to get rid of that pesky kid for good, he begins to psychically throw him towards the roof of the lab.
But Ash is saved by a floating, pink bubble: Mew, who woke up underwater at the beginning of the movie and found its way to the island through either some mystical psychic instinct or plot-induced luck, has stepped in. Mew plays cutely with the bubble for a moment before Mewtwo, irritated at the sudden interruption and implicit challenge, blasts the bubble apart and begins to throw a series of Shadow Balls at Mew. After it has dodged several of them and come a bit closer, Mewtwo shouts in anger that even though he is created from Mew, he is more powerful and therefore he is the "real" one and the one who can go on living. With that, he flies up to fight Mew; at first it just dodges like a good little pacifist, but then, after Mewtwo has commented that Mew must be afraid of him to keep dodging like that, it is hit with a subsequent Shadow Ball and, after a tense moment when it seems it has been blown away, retaliates with a sparkling blue ball of energy of its own.
Mewtwo rises back from the rubble and declares that he underestimated Mew and that now they will fight to see who is the "real" one (yet again this bizarre idea of Mewtwo's that only one of them can be "real"). He further tells the other Pokémon that they must do the same - fight one-on-one with their counterparts to decide a "winner" who gets to live on.
Mew objects that the originals will always be the real ones, and furthermore that they will not lose to the clones, at least if all their special powers are disabled. Oh, so Mew isn't so much of a pacifist after all! Thus a great battle ensues - a purely physical one, since Mewtwo blocks the Pokémon's special abilities as instructed by Mew; even Mew and Mewtwo themselves start to ram one another in mid-air, though they're inside protective bubbles. The Pokémon are quickly all exhausted but keep on fighting anyway.
Nurse Joy, the original Blastoise's trainer and Misty and Brock stand by and watch in horror while explaining the moral of the movie: they're all living beings, whether they're originals or clones, and they all have the right to live, no matter which one is strongest, because they're all the same. Meanwhile, a Meowth clone approaches Meowth of Team Rocket and they get into a fighting stance before he complains that it will hurt if they fight, and the clone, being the same as him after all, agrees. So they just sit there and talk about how pretty the moon is. It's kind of adorable.
The only one of the other Pokémon who refuses to fight is Ash's Pikachu, and its clone beats it senselessly around while obviously hating to fight somebody who doesn't fight back. Nurse Joy explains that in life, Pokémon will fight until they defeat their opponent, no matter what, and that is why they continue to fight this pointless fight - when they've been declared opponents, they won't stop until they've driven the opponent away. Thus, while the clones and originals remain nominally adversaries - which here essentially means while Mewtwo and Mew continue to fight - they will keep on fighting even though they have no real differences or anything to fight about.
Eventually, all the Pokémon have pretty much collapsed from exhaustion, and Mew and Mewtwo clash once more, taking out the electricity on the arena. In relative darkness, they ditch the no-special-attacks rule and flare up with pink and blue flames. Just as they blast energy at one another, Ash runs up in his typical recklessness and comes up between the attacks.
The movie got a bit odd earlier, but now is when it becomes downright weird. Ash collapses - one would think the blast could kill him or that in the spirit of cartoon characters he would be mildly charred but fine, but bizarrely, he does neither; instead, he is turned to stone. Mew and Mewtwo stare in puzzlement - they're probably intended to be thinking, "How could a human be so stupid as to try to stop us by sacrificing himself?", but the context makes it seem like they're wondering what the hell just happened - while Pikachu runs into the arena to its petrified trainer and tries unsuccessfully to prod and then shock him back to life, even while completely exhausted. When all fails and Pikachu can no longer produce the electricity for a Thundershock, it just stands there and begins to cry.
Then all the Pokémon on the arena, originals and clones alike, suddenly begin to cry as well, and somehow, getting enough Pokémon to cry is just the cure for petrification. No, really. This just doesn't make sense; it's an aching deus ex machina pulled out so that Ash can be revived and everybody can go home happy. In the dub they figured they had to set this up somehow, so they made a random woman from earlier in the movie (who was originally talking about the storm before they left) mention a "legend" about tears bringing people back to life; not so in the Japanese version, where this scene is just completely out of nowhere. What's worse is that not only does it revive Ash: it also makes the sun come back, and suddenly everybody is friends! The originals and the clones, the trainers, even Mewtwo is suddenly filled with joy and love and magically understands all of a sudden that he and Mew are both Pokémon and both have the same right to live. How could you, script-writers? Mewtwo was so delightfully interestingly twisted and then you just introduce a cop-out to avoid making him sensibly tear down all his Freudian defense mechanisms?
But oh, well; what's done is done. Mewtwo has suddenly become a good guy, and he levitates all the clones into the air and flies off with them to find a place where they can be accepted. Meanwhile, everybody is teleported off the island and their memory is erased; next thing they know, Ash, Misty and Brock are back in the Pokémon Center where they were told about the storm earlier in the movie and can't remember a thing. Ash sees Mew in the clouds, but Misty and Brock see nothing; Ash concludes he saw the same Pokémon he saw at the beginning of his journey, which if you remember that far back was actually Ho-oh and not Mew, so I suppose he's just really confused.
And thus the movie ends, exactly nothing having happened from our heroes' point of view.
The Good
Mewtwo really is quite compelling as a character and, at least in the first half of the movie and prior to his sudden conversion by tears, has real psychological depth behind his actions, or at least can be interpreted that way. The actual idea behind the plot - a clone trying to justify his own existence - is really not bad at all. The montage of fighting Pokémon really does portray the futility and pointlessness of it reasonably effectively, and something about the scene where Ash is revived, particularly Pikachu's attempts at the beginning, manages to be a bit touching even despite how horribly nonsensical it is. Then there are some pretty visuals and Mew's antics are cute.
The Bad
The crying scene just, well, as I said, doesn't make sense. The whole movie is building up to something epic, and it feels like something huge ought to need to happen for Mewtwo to change his mind, but no - within a few tears, everything is okay. Because Ash has to save the day, and he's not exactly the psychological type.
But really, it wouldn't even have been that hard to make Mewtwo's redemption at least somewhat more believable. It can't be that difficult to set up a situation that shows how both originals and clones can coexist peacefully and that physical strength isn't that meaningful and make that get him thinking - it would still have been abrupt, but at least it would have made sense by what train of logic that would have made him realize he was wrong.
In Conclusion
I enjoyed watching the movie, primarily for all the delicious psychological potential of Mewtwo. I love characters I can overanalyze. And for the first half of the movie, that really worked for me. Then we got to the action and Mewtwo started making a bit less sense as a character, and I couldn't enjoy it as much - and then by the time the tear scene came along, I just couldn't take it seriously anymore. When Mewtwo redeemed himself, I just felt cheated.
Thus, it starts off pretty good, and then as Ash becomes more involved, it starts to slowly decay. Nothing against Ash, but a lot of the Pokémon movies suffer mostly for his involvement - the plot is too grand for somebody like Ash to sensibly save the day, so in order for him to save the day anyway, the plot is instead sacrificed.
Page last modified August 17 2009 at 21:49 GMT
